Monday, February 25, 2008

Another Monday,
another Pavlovian lurch upwards in the US markets. S&P
confirmed that they are absolutely committed to their philosophy of
failing to downgrade anybody who pays their S&P bill... at
least until the day after they file Ch11.

Honestly - for market to rally on a definitive proof that the
world's major ratings agency has decided to punt on second down... it's
laughable.

If you want to see some folks who know how to rate stuff, then
head on over to GT Market Analytics; at the moment
everything is still locked down tighter than a goldfish's sphincter,
but tomorrow (or maybe the day after) I plan to throw open the gates
and let the Hordes enter to kick the tyres.

This represents the culmination of 3 years of work (or
thereabouts), with long hiatii (hiatuses? You be the judge), based on
the vision I had when I was back at IWL trying to get some analyst
tools developed for the hard-pressed team.

As you will see at the Great Unveiling, I've not gained a
solitary bit of expertise at making things look good. but the grunt
underpinning the site is a wonder to behold. And it's flexible, too.

So subscribe: $4 busk a week (a little under A$4.50 given $A's
rush towards parity). Bloody hell - putting it that way, you would
generate more revenue (for me) by clicking on a few links on this very
site. Amazing.

Economic News

Th major news was the ludicrous decision by S&P to
formally neglect to downgrade MBIA and AMBAC. It' not going to help
their bondholders in the long term, but doubtless S&P was well
remunerated for the decision, and the analyst concerned will be
forgotten soon enough (who was the S&P analyst who refused to
downgrade Enron until the day AFTER the shares were suspended? NOBODY
KNOWS).

Existing Homes Sales were a little stronger than expected.
Whoop de doo.

Fed Open Market Operations

One big repo ($10.75 billion), but not a signle dollar of it
was in Treasury backed collateral. We are now in week 2 of Bernanke
Watch - he is supposed to be resigning before Week 8.

Headline Indices

Insert material here

The Dow Jones Industrial Average
advanced +189.20 points (1.53%) to 12570.22 points. The index high for
the day was 12584.62, while the low was 12341.04. The only Dow decliner
was Citigroup
- which is the most heavily manipulated stock on the NYSE big board.
That is not a good sign if da Boyz decided to let it slide on a day
like today.

The S&P500 Index advanced
+18.69 points (1.38%) to 1371.80 points. The Nasdaq
Composite advanced +24.13 points (1.05%) to 2327.48 points
and the Nasdaq100 advanced +12.02 points (0.68%)
to 1785.46 points. The index high for the day was 1790.77, while the
low was 1761.93.

Precious Metals

Precious metals futures are moving in about the right
direction, given my bear call on Platinum last week. But I expect it
will bounce tomorrow (it should have done so today) at which time we
will get a second bite at a short-

Precious Metal Futures

Index

Close

Gain(Loss)

%

Gold

942.1

-5.7

-0.6

Silver

1812.5

+9.0

0.5

Platinum

2154.0

-13.8

-0.64

Palladium

521.70

+5.85

1.13

Energy Complex

Energy futures are lulling spec longs into a state of boredom.
Small spec long open interest is falling away, and pretty soon Crude is
going to slice up through $100 and kiss it goodbye. There might be a
lurch downwards first - five or six bucks in a session - but it's no
lay-down misere.

Energy Futures

Index

Close

Gain(Loss)

%

Crude Oil

99.22

+0.41

0.41

Heating Oil

2.7608

+0.0183

0.67

Gasoline RBOB

2.5423

+0.0086

0.34

Natural Gas

9.170

+0.024

0.26

Bellwethers

The nine-stock group that makes up the Rant bellwethers
declined on average by 0.3%. The fallout occurred as follows:

General Electric (GE) up $+0.66
(1.97%)
to $34.21 on volume of 39.09 million units.

Citigroup (C) down $0.38 (1.51%) to
$24.74 on volume of 119.98 million units.

Wal-Mart (WMT) up $+0.36 (0.72%) to
$50.33 on volume of 25.53 million units.

IBM (IBM) up $+2.01 (1.86%) to
$110.08
on volume of 8.14 million units.

Intel (INTC) up $+0.12 (0.61%) to
$19.94
on volume of 82.07 million units.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) up $+0.20
(0.85%)
to $23.80 on volume of 57.01 million units.

Google (GOOG) down $21.36 (4.21%) to
$486.44 on volume of 8.34 million units.

Fannie Mae (FNM) down $0.45 (1.57%)
to
$28.27 on volume of 17.7 million units.

Freddie Mac (FRE) down $0.43 (1.62%)
to
$26.18 on volume of 18.51 million units.